Adding and moving blocks

The block chooser, slash menu, and drag handles are part of Hydra and look the same everywhere. What you can pick from those choosers — the list of block types — comes from your site's design system. One site might offer "Lead paragraph", "Pull quote", "Stat highlight"; another might just have "Text" and "Image". Mechanic is identical.

Adding a block

Three ways:

"+" button in the preview

Hover or select a block in the preview. A "+" button appears outside one corner of it (typically below for vertical layouts, to the right for horizontal). Click it to open the block chooser — a popup listing the block types allowed at that position.

The chooser is filtered: it only shows block types that fit the surrounding container's allowedBlocks. Block types are grouped (Common, Site, Custom, Templates) and typically a "Most used" group is pinned to the top.

Slash menu (in an empty text block)

Type / at the start of an empty text block (a fresh paragraph or a paragraph you've cleared). The slash menu opens with the list of block types you can convert to. Keep typing to filter; Enter picks; Escape dismisses.

This is the fastest way to add a heading, image, embed, or other block while you're already typing — no mouse needed.

Enter from a selected block (block mode)

Press Escape to enter block mode, then Enter. A new block is created after the current one, of the most appropriate default type (or the only type allowed in the current container if there's just one).

If the current block is itself a container, Enter creates a new container of the same type and the cursor lands inside it on the first typeable leaf — so you can keep typing without aiming. Useful for sliders, columns, accordions: hit Enter once and you're already in the next slide / column / panel.

Moving a block

Drag and drop

Each selected block has a drag handle in the Quanta toolbar above it. Click and drag from there to move the block somewhere else. While dragging:

• A line indicator shows where the block will land between siblings.
• A shaded overlay highlights the whole drop target when you hover over an empty container — dropping there places the block as the container's first child (replacing the empty placeholder rather than landing as a sibling).
• The page auto-scrolls when you drag near the top or bottom of the viewport.

Drop targets are filtered by allowedBlocks — you can't drop into a region that doesn't accept this block type. The line/shade indicator only appears over valid drop targets.

Reordering from the sidebar

The sidebar's children list (visible when a container block is selected) has a drag handle (⋮⋮) on each child row. Drag it up or down to reorder children within the same container. Useful when the children are paged (slides of a slider, panels of an accordion) and you can't drag in the preview because only one is visible at a time. See Selecting blocks › The children list.

Cut / copy / paste

Standard keyboard shortcuts work on the selected block(s):

• Cmd/Ctrl+C — copy
• Cmd/Ctrl+X — cut (block disappears from the original spot when you paste)
• Cmd/Ctrl+V — paste at the current selection

This works across pages — copy a block on one page, navigate to another, paste.

Block-mode keyboard

In block mode (after pressing Escape):

Arrow Up/Down is container-aware — it walks across container boundaries. Pressing Down on the last block of a column jumps into the next column rather than getting stuck.

Working with multiple blocks at once

If you've selected multiple blocks (see Selecting blocks):

• Drag and drop — works on the whole group; line indicator shows where the group will land.
• Delete — removes all selected blocks.
• Wrap / Convert / Cut / Copy / Paste — all apply to the group. See Containers for wrap.

Empty containers

Container blocks can never be truly empty — when the last child is deleted, the container shows a placeholder block in its place, with a "+" in the middle for adding the next block. The placeholder is stripped automatically when you save, so it never ends up in the saved page.

Drop a block onto an empty container and it replaces the placeholder rather than landing alongside it.